Former Brockton VA doctor now registered sex offender

Friday

Oct 6, 2017 at 10:55 AMOct 6, 2017 at 11:15 AM

A psychiatrist who worked for about four years at the Brockton VA campus is now a registered sex offender, after pleading guilty to the use of a communications system to facilitate offenses involving children

Marc Larocque Enterprise Staff Writer @Enterprise_Marc

BROCKTON – A former Brockton VA campus doctor pleaded guilty to using a computer to solicit a minor, and he is now losing his right to practice medicine in Massachusetts.

Timothy J. Bunton had already voluntarily agreed not to practice medicine in Massachusetts after he was first arrested in 2015, according to state officials.

But after he pleaded guilty to the charge, and became a registered sex offender in Virginia, the Massachusetts Board of Medicine took disciplinary action at its Sept. 28 meeting and announced its punishment on Thursday.

“In a consent order, the board revoked Dr. Timothy J. Bunton’s right to renew his license to practice medicine after he agreed that he had pled guilty to a criminal charge of using a computer to solicit a minor,” said the Massachusetts Board of Medicine, in a statement released on Thursday.

The board said Bunton held a limited license to practice medicine in Massachusetts from May 19, 2010 until September 19, 2012, before he was granted a full license to practice medicine in the state.

Bunton was a psychiatry resident at Harvard Medical School, from 2010 to 2014. Throughout his residency, Bunton worked at the Brockton campus of the VA Boston Healthcare System, according to a VA spokesperson.

“He did not work at VABHS as a fully independent provider after completion of his residency in psychiatry,” said Pallas Wahl, a spokesperson for Boston VA, reached by email.

During his time at the Brockton VA medical campus, located on Belmont Street just off of Route 24, Bunton provided mental health services to veterans, Wahl said.

Bunton then returned to Virginia to practice medicine, and became an interventional spine and pain fellow at Virginia Commonwealth University in 2014, according to his LinkedIn page. Before coming to the Brockton VA campus during his residency, Bunton earned his medical degree in 2010 at Eastern Virginia Medical School, where he was president of the American Medical Student Association, according to his page.

However, Bunton voluntarily relinquished his license to practice medicine in Virginia after he was arrested in a public park in Fairfax County on June 8, 2015, according to a consent order filed with the Virginia Board of Medicine.

“Dr. Bunton engaged in email communications with an anonymous individual who claimed to be a father engaged in an incestuous relationship with his purported 5-year-old daughter,” states the document. “During those conversations, Dr. Bunton represented himself as an anonymous sympathetic individual. This individual requested Dr. Bunton meet him in person for the purpose of engaging in sexual activity with him and his daughter. Eventually, Dr. Bunton agreed to meet this individual in a public park with the understanding that Dr. Bunton would go to this individuals’s home afterwards to meet his daughter for sexual purposes.”

The man Bunton intended to meet in the park was actually an undercover police officer, according to the consent order, which was signed and agreed to by the former Brockton VA psychiatrist.

“Consequently, when Dr. Bunton went to meet this individual in the park ... he was confronted by police and arrested,” the document states.

Since then, Bunton has been receiving treatment from a sex offender treatment provider, the consent order states. But in the document, Bunton also states that he did not intend to have sexual contact with a minor that day, and he submitted polygraph test results and a forensic psychosexual evaluation claiming that he did not have a sexual interest in children.

“Dr. Bunton would testify that he is not sexually attracted to minors, but instead engaged in the foregoing conduct out of an interest in researching taboo sexual behaviors,” the consent order states.

Since that consent order was filed, however, Bunton pleaded guilty on June 23 this year to use of communications systems to facilitate certain offenses involving children. And now Bunton is registered as a sex offender in Virginia, where he remains imprisoned at the Fairfax County Adult Detention Center.

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.